four-year term for chester arthur. you notice 18, the number of republican presidents and 15 of democratic presidents does not add up to 44, the total number of presidencies. that is because, of course, many of our early presidents were partiless like george washington or federalness like adams or wig like harrison. thanks for being part of my program this week. i'll see you next week. stay tuned for "reliable sources." . this is the week when mother nature collide with politics, and we know who one. the climax of a tumultuous political season. the white house on the line. the news was all about this. >> as we come on the air, it is happening right now. hurricane sandy crashing on shore, winds now at 90 miles per hour, and this storm is so big, so vast, 60 million americans

will feel its power. >> one of the worst storms that has ever hit atlantic city. this city is basically underwater. >> it is the most powerful storm to hit the region since they start keeping track. >> it feels like i am standing 100 feet into the ocean. these are real waves coming along. you can see them behind me. >> did this saturation coverage of hurricane sandy wipe out the campaign or just send it underground? were news agencies catering to the interest of the damaging storm? why has there been so little coverage of climate change? and did the media make way too much of chris christie embracing president obama as they toured the devastation in new jersey? plus social media was all over the hurricane but there were disasters made. i'm howard kurtz, and this is "reliable sources." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

it takes a lot to upend the final week of a presidential campaign, but hurricane sandy was one powerful storms. news agencies were covering it. but then breakthrough through the beleaguered pundits. president obama went to new jersey to inspect the storm damage and chris christie, a mitt romney supporter, actually said nice things about him. >> reporter: is there any possibility that governor romney may go to new jersey to tour some of the damage with you? >> i have no idea nor am i the least bit concerned or interested. >> governor chris christie has a new best friend, president obama. i think on the margins, this probably hurts obama a little bit in that that it adds to the general feeling that things are amis in america. >> the president's nowhere to be found on benghazi but he'll be out there for the hurricane. >> yes. even hurricanes can be

politicized. two days with pundits now predicting i have vivictory fort obama, we have a former washington burro chief for cnn and a cnn contributor. "washington post" opinion section, it has prognosticators forecasting the election. almost everyone says president obama is going to win except for a gop strategist and the horse racing columnist. is there a group think going on at this point? >> i think so but it's based on other things. we know where barack obama is ahead and mitt romney is ahead and where things are too close to call and people can do the math. that's what you're thinking. >> in the one poll it's 48%/489%. i wonder if journalists are putting too much faith in these polls because thee are small leagues. >> i like that the horse racing

columnist, he picks a favorite, right? sometimes when grow to the track, do you that. back in 2000 we didn't have a place to go to aggregate all of the polls. now view have access to so much data, so much state-level data that you can sit there and go state by state and actually have a somewhat more informed opinion about what's going to happen in ohio. so i see reliance on polls by journalists as one of the good developments in our business. it's actually using some scientific social science methods to make predictions and most predictions that pundits make are not based on social science. >> the dangers are that it overtakes the coverage. i think that's dangerous so close to the election because everyone's asking the horse race collection. who's going win. what's he doing on the economy? those questions belonged to the debates and a lot earlier. it's all about who shows up and where the numbers come from no.

>> the way the storm took over this past week and we saw the pictures of barack obama and chris christie. so much ink and air time was devoted to that it was like cat nip. >> number two, it's so rare for a republican, especially someone like chris christie who has spent the campaign as a partisan romney supporter. it's so rare for a republican to say anything nice about a democrat or vice versa, that that's major, major news. when someone steps into a leadership role and says something is bigger than politics. >> underlying it it seems to me there's a certain cynicism which is chris christie couldn't possibly be sincere in thinking that the residents of his state who were just deb stated by this storm, without power, without gas, many of them losing homes, that that was more important than partisan politics. almost like we didn't buy that. >> i couldn't agree with you more. imagine you're chris christie

and you're out there and a woman who's lost everything is hanging on your arm and sobbing uncontrollably. you go to the jersey shore where thousands live and you see no shore. you walk through a neighborhood and all you see is sand and flood. the impact politically, em nomicily and personally for you as the governor is nothing you ever expected. then you talk to governor christie and he says i don't give a grab about the campaign. >> this is where reporters are so detached and they think everything is about the campaign and politics. politicians, give themselves credit. some of the stuff we obsessor about every day does wash away. >> i em not saying there's no politics involved. >> it's a crisis. >> it's a crisis. >> but it also intrudes on the narrative. this is where you're right, howie and why reporters go crazy over something like this.

my god, chris christie, a guy as partisan as they come, suddenly scrambling the whole thing and so you provide that counternarrative and that's the story of headlines. >> let's throw up the picture of the new york magazine picture that captures lower manhattan being blacked out right after sandy hit. as bad as this storm was, was it magnified in the media coverage because new york city was so directly devastated? >> yes. and not only was it magnified because it was new york, but a lot of other reporting outside of new york was minimized or forgotten. i went through and i pulled a bunch of headlines from other communities. farmers urged to keep thurow records due to hurricane sandy. morris county, emergency shelters, charging stations. there was a story out of west virginia because the storms moved through there and there were homes that were destroyed we barely heard about that. so i think the new york media

capital and also the sheer size and scope of it sucked this coverage in. >> and even in new york city -- i mean manhattan, it took people four days to realize staten island has been totally devastated. and it took a while for journalists to get to that story. >> the media capital censored in times square and downtown and when you're going into work, literally what you're seeing is the story. >> you know the landmarks and the subways. >> but it took the mayor a way to get there. >> and it's the most populated area so it was affected. it's not like it wasn't a story. it took a while for it to par e radiate out. >> the coverage of "bloomberg business week" if we can put that up, quit it's global warming, stupid." and the story said while no particular story could be blamed

on it the growing frequency of these very violent storms, climate change is a factor according to most experts. >> it's adding energy from the storms coming from the ocean. >> is that in your headlines? why haven't there been in the last two years more coverage? because the candidates aren't talking about climate chachlk? >> no. at least one party is not talking about it. most democrats believes in climate change, wants to do something it but doesn't want to do anything about it because it's a political loser. barack obama in 2009, 2010 pushed a cap and trade bill and almost got it passed. if you talk to nancy pelosi and rahm emanuel, they almost lost their seats. and with reporters, unless there's a two-party debate, they don't cover it. >> this is a big problem and is

this is where barack obama has been whacked and he has been. they walked away from elements of it from the administration itself burke this is the big question that needs to be raised. not that this should be connected to climate change because it cannot be but the unpredictability, the veracity, everything. never mind the rising sea levels. try taking the sub kwai in new york city today. if you want to address this, it's billions, hundreds of billions of dollars to fortify coastal areas. >> i think you made the salient point. >> this is one of those issues where the press has to say, what's the science, it doesn't matter if one party's saying they don't believe in it. they're wrong. the science is compelling. >> and the media have become intimidated i think. intimidated by a lot of the political push back and the fact that there's silence on both

sides. they were not asked about it in debates, it has not come up in the campaign trail. >> ial want to turn to libya. fox news more than any other news outlet that i have seen has been hammering away at this story and fox had a scoop based on stories saying that the cia which we now know is more heavily involved than was previously acknowledged made a question for military backup and this was denied. that story was not weedily pick ued up and foxx media said the rest of the media is proobama and turning away. your thoughts. >> the fox reporting raises very seriously questions that need to be seriously pursued. have two fundamental claims. one, the cia told people on the ground to stand down instead of respond to the immediate attack, second that military help was forthcoming and it did not. the problem with the fox coverage is they have been so,

you know, out over their skis criticizing the obama administration from the very outset of this that the investigative reporting itself raises questions about where fox comes from journal is particularly. there are unattributable quotes that if i were the reporter i would say, wait a minute, if you're going to say the response was incompetent and quote a single unnamed source to that, i want the detail when you're alleging that level of wrongdoing. >> right. >> this is a problem when you're tied fieing a strictly partisan news organization. when you have a scoop or reporting that might be compelling, people question it because they think you're just there to attack the presidents. i think there's enough in in the reporting and enough in the back and forth between fox and the cia that important questions have been raised and the press is not going get to the bottom of this. this needs to be kicked to some kind of independent investigator to get to the bottom of it. >> i think it's really important

because fox reporting and other reporting raises really serious questions. not did they not try but were they not able to respond, the u.s., militarily and otherwise, and if not, why not. why was security not provided for these people if it wasn't. >> let me get a break. when we come back, which network is more partisan in this campaign coverage? fox or msnbc? we'll have that answer in a moment. [ female announcer ] a classic meatloaf recipe from stouffer's

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a new study looks at the campaign coverage. here's interesting statistics. fox news, 46% negative against obama, msnbc on mitt romney, 71% negative against the former governor, 3% positive. a 23:1 ratio. does msnbc outfox fox? >> it shows they have.

according to this study they've got further in the other direction than fox has. i'll admit to being surprised by this. i only watch cnn, of course. >> it's part of my job, and romney gets hammered pretty consistently on msnbc. here's numbers on cnn, 21% positive. when it comes to romney, 36% negative. >> i think this is the interesting part. >> cnn is almost perfectly balanced because a lot of stories are -- well, it's negative because you say he's lost the lead in ohio and he's going to lose the election. >> that's right. if you look at everything they collected. they find this what they call mixed coverage which has a little bit of both and both are about 50% of the coverage is both. i actually think they've gotten what they deserved. i'm not at all surprised by the msnbc and fox coverage. >> who has gotten what they deserved? >> both candidates.

it was negative against romney and -- >> 23:1 rk, to romney, they dese that? >> no, no, no. ny n the study, they look at the media broadly. do they deserve that? it's whether msnbc and fox believe that's their job. >> that's their business models ? >> yes. they're not the news page, they're the op-ed page. >> though this is becoming less of a clear line now, that they try to be straight reporters and that it's the o'reillies and the ed schultzes and rachel ma douse that do the opinion. >> false, false, false. it's not true. some of the shows on msnbc are staffed by straight reporters and others are more partisan. the point you were making about -- this study overall actually is pretty good for the press and is a hit against people who think that the mainstream media

is biased toward democrats. you pointed out if you take out the horse race coverage, that's just coverage that says obama is ahead and count that as a positive story, if you clear it all out, it's perfectly sneechb let me move on. i want to get to nate silver, he's predicting an obama victory on tuesday some of he got criticized by joe scarborough on msnbc and on twitter nate silver offered a $1,000 bet which later increased the $2,000 that will go to charity, if he's right, the money would go to charity. >> look. i think what nate silver does is a credit to journalism and i think a lot about people who say things off the top of their head about who's going to win or lose. on the ore hand, as a journalist you can't put money up for one or another even if it's going a charity. >> "new york times" can't have

it both ways. they can't say on the one hand we're going to be the one with the journalistic ethics and be in line with the blogger who on a daily basis says personally, you know, occasionally steps over the line. >> i don't think -- >> but his blog is solid and transparent and has been very direct. >> that's the most important thing. it's transparent. go on the site. you can see most of what he does with his ail go rhythm. it's better than based on one's gut, but he should. have placed the bet. >> yes, he shouldn't have placed the bet but hes with having fun. >> the times says if you're going to -- this is the problem that all news organizations are in today. >> they walkts to be hip. >> you want to be hip, be blogged, but you want to be solid journal is tick. you can't have it all.

>> nate is -- there's some competition what nate does and what the other reporters do. he's not the favorite person. >> thanks for stopping by. up next, the aftermath of hurricane sandy cast as new spotlight on the role of government. the storm over mitt romney's position on fema in just a moment. [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus presents the cold truth.

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the federal response to hurricane sandy has brought the government's role in disasters into the medial spotlight, and it wasn't long before news organizations starting replaying this clim of mitt romney last year in a republican primary debate moderated by cnn's john king. >> some people say, you know, maybe we're learning a lesson here that the state should take on more of this role. how do you take on something like this? >> absolutely. every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the state, that's the right direction. >> has this sparked an overdue debate in the media or purely partisan one? joining us now in san francisco, deborah saunders, columnist for "the san francisco chronicle." deborah saunders, romney didn't quite say he would abolish fema

but he did sort of imply it. fair game in the wake of this devastation? >> yeah. i think so. he did say he wanted to move the federal agency -- for states to run things and i'm sure a lot of people don't think that's a good idea. you don't see a lot of people talking about that, do you? >> on the contrary, they're saying, oh, no, the governor supporting fema. >> the way they dealt with it, they ask him different ways. which do you mean? i think it does get to the heart of what this campaign is really all about, which is the role of the federal government and clearly barack obama and mitt romney have two different ideas about it, particularly in disaster relief.

>> some of your liberal colleagues have made an issue out of that, but has it become major story for the press? >> i think it has. i've read a lot of stories and seen a lost stories. with romney, there is an attempt at any rate to reinvent himself. look. he was totally against abortion. now, not so much. i'm not as bad as you think i am. he was totally against obama care. now he says there are parts i like. now he says give disaster relief to the united states and now he says let's keep fema. >> that has become the theme, debra saunders. i wonder if it's fair or we're seeing a certain amount of span in this coverage? >> look it. i think we've seen the etch a sketch romney. he moved to the right in order to win the prom mair. now he's moving toward the center. i think we're seeing the real

romney, the guy who's a technocrat, who would come in with his pencil and move money around to make fema more effective and more cost-effective. so i think it's fair for people to point it out and ask which one is the real one. i have to tell you, though, i keep getting e-mails from the white house, forward from fee mall and i see the white house taking fema and using its campaign slogan on fema everywhere. i think that's sort of an issue too. >> possible exploitation of a tragedy, but at the same time the president has gotten a lot of praise for his performance after sandy struck. let me turn to an ad, a romney ads that that has come out in the closing days. he's feeling sensitive on the auto bailout. has to do with the production of jeeps. >> obama took gm and chrysler into bankruptcy and sold advicely to italians who are going to build jeeps in china.

mitt romney will fight for every american job. >> now in a "new york times" front page story. not a column or editorial, it was at the impression the move would come to jobs in ohio. >> i think this is very rif yk for the romney campaign and blew up in their face, and i'll tell them why. >> should straight journalists be saying that's a misleading ad? >> they didn't say it. the president of gm came out -- >> afterward. >> -- and said wrong. they have just hammered romney on this. the poignant comment to make is the political media. when you get right down to saying something that's not true, particularly in the day of fact checkers, it's dangerous. >> i would argue, debra, the

fact checkers have a less. in this ad the wording is very careful. sold chrysler to italians who are going to build jeeps in china. it doesn't say but implies that some of those are the american jobs. >> here's what sort of drives me crazy about this. i look them up. i look them up on the ad and he gives it four pinocchios and he writes, quote, technically correct but misleading. i don't know. if it's technically correct doesn't it mean it's a two-pinocchio thing or something? bill says we expect ads to be a little misleading. >> let me get a brief comment from you. >> the romney ad, second radio ad started. he said he saved the auto

industry. for ohio or china. that is not -- you know what romney's trying to say. there's no doubt what he's trying to say, he saved the auto industry to send jobs to china, which is not true. we oom come back to op-eds written by romney. i want to ask one more thing. i get e-mails all the time. conservative commentators say that the media collectively are giving president obama too much of a pass on what happened at the consulate in benghazi. now, has that story been undercovered in your view? >> yes, i think it has. now, first of all i want to give credit it to a lot of places. cnn, arwa damon at cnn found ambassador stevens' personal journal. cnn has done great reporting and fox. there was a story done saying he's not afraid of the americans and nobody's questioned him. he's the guy that people believe

was the ring leader of this attack. >> but you're saying they're the exceptions? >> but the exception is there isn't a rush to find out what's happened before the election. let's face it. the administration gave a completely bogus explanation for what happened when they blamed this on a video. >> let me get back to bill. it think it's frustrating the right sniet is frustrating the right. the reason they're frustrating is nobody's buying it. they're really trying to whip it up. i've been on so many shows where we can be talking about the world series and somebody will call and say what about benghazi. i think it has been covered extensively, and they haven't been able to prove that the obama administration deliberately lied and that's what's driving them crazy. >> bill press, debra saunders, thanks so much for joining us. coming up, the media

coverage, has it been more superficial than substantive? we're joined in just a moment. we'rwith questions fromtump sombing elections.kies do you know where your polling place is? maybe somewhere around my house. mine's just, right over that way. well you can find out exactly where it is using bing elections. it's a good day for politics. which way do you lean politically? conservative. republican. well, using the bing news selector you can find news from whichever way you lean. (together) social on this side, financial. which party is currently predicted to win a majority in the senate?

the republicans? would you make a bet on that? no. are you chicken?

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time now to grade the media coverage. i spoke earlier with larry. director of politics from university of virginia from charlottesville. larry sabato, welcome. >> thank you. >> i have been moaning annd groaning wchl've been too sidetracked by gaffes. do you share my assessment? >> basically. it sounds like every presidential campaign i've ever seen, but i share your assessment. >> it seems to me you go back to the erlg 1990s and the coverage was way more substantive than what we're getting now, youtube, attention span, everything's got to fit into 140 characters. why is it in this important election there hasn't been more consistent coverage in your

view? >> well, partly because the media today, at least the establishment media, is a pail sh pale shadow of what they were when i wrote that 20 years ago. most news organization, even the good one, don't have the number of people, the searchers, don't have the investigative journalists that they wasn't had. and i think there's another dimension to this, too, howie. the press, having covered so many, they don't control the agenda. the staff controls the agenda. so it's difficult to get the candidates to focus on the substantive issues like, say, the fiscal cliff or the national debt if they don't want to discuss them in detail. >> that seems to be a bit of a copout, that is letting my profession off the hook because even if the candidates are playing small ball and are ducking the hard questions about fiscal choices, for example, you know, we have a pretty mighty

meg phone between televisions and newspapers even if it's smaller than it used to be and we could pound away at the fact that these questions aren't being answered, that the issues like climate change aren't being addressed. and yet it seems to me it's a lot easier to talk about big bird and bayonets and binders full of women. >> that's certainly true. i've criticized a lot of that myself. particularly the gaffe coverage. my god who wouldn't commit gaffes if they had a microphone attached to them 12 hours a day? we all do. we all say things the wrong way or get our tongues twisted, whatever. that's the easy coverage. it's so easy to do a story on that. so easy to have a little comical piece. and it's encouraged, i think, by the late-night comics. they cover that. and then that becomes the next day's story and on and on. it is more difficult to coverage the substantive issues and to ask tough questions not only of

the candidates but also of the american people. it's very difficult to do that and it is the role of the press to do it, however, i can see why they don't. you know, so much of the public only wants to hear what they want to hear. they want things to be validated in terms of their own partisan identity. they don't want to hear anything contrary about their candidate or they scream bias. >> that's an interesting thought. that's an interesting point. you're not only saying that news rooms are smaller than they used to be, you're not only saying it's easier to cover a big bird controversy than the intricacies of the medicare debate but you say people now gravitate toward the kinds of media organizations which they already believe and that doesn't leave much of a path would you say for journalists who at least try to get it straight? >> well, it leaves a path for them as long as they don't mind not having much of an audience. >> but that's not much of a path alt all.

we've got stay in business. >> that's what i'm saying. they've got to run a business. they've got to attract viewers. they've got to attract readers. and, you know, the press has different kinds of competition today. it's online. and anybody can find dozens of sources to reinforce every bias they have, to tell everybody what they know in a way that's very appealing. many choose that route and them that becomes their reality. they don't want the reality challenged by anybody. >> and in our remaining half mint, do you find this state of affairs to be a little depressing? i find it very depressing but i don't know if it's because i'm in my 60s or the press and campaign coverage have deteriorated. it's kind of a clois race, howie. >> i can't help you with the

first one but we'll continue coveraging. cheer up. it's going to be over soon. thanks is very much larry sabato. >> thanks, howie. not everyone followed on television. a look at how instagram and twitter followed the storm, mistakes and all.

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when hurricane sandy struck many people flipped on the tube be mull yops of people turned to social need ymedia. joining me, welcome. you write that instagram and photo sharing app might be the new citizen journalism as we watched it unfold. is it? >> i think instagram was a lit billion it of a disappointment frankly. we wrote that on monday. we had an exclusive sitdown with kevin who create ud instagram the week before and he said this was really his vision for instagram, if it to be more than what rich kids buy on instagram and more than having an arab spring moment and we wondering if this would be it ba a lot of the people being hit by the

storm had iphones. it was a very visual story. i think twitter was the big standout. >> twitter -- >> they were doing that on monday morning. when they were all mostly fake photos. >> i want to get back to the authenticity issue in just a moment, but all the conversations that were going on on twitter and one of the advantages it seemed tomy, on television, television can only show one thing at a time. on twitter you can look through all of the messages and find out what's happening in your neighborhood, somebody else's neighborhood, is there flooding, is there power. do you think it fosters a sense of community? >> yeah, i think it does. i think that always customizable and sort of micro news twitter is amazing. it's the only news media we've ever seen that can be incredibly

micro, just what's happening on your street or everyone around the world reacting to this. you could have been in china and could have known what everyone in brooklyn was feeling. it's both like expands space and time and contracts it. if you didn't follow anyone on the east coast, you could have not seen anything about it or it could have been your entire feed. i think that's one thing that makes it so powerful. >> another thing is where you can't talk back to your tv unless you want to sit in your living room and yell at the set, you can twitter. you don't have to own a television or printing press. is that also part of its a lure, particularly in a time of crisis or emergency where everybody wants to feel plugged in? >> yeah, absolutely. let's not forget too it was a way to check in and know if your loved ones were okay. a good part of my staff was on the east coast and i knew as long as they were filing

stories, they were okay. but in the wee hours as well where i could see them retweeting a way of knowing everything was okay there. it is good when you have a big story, people want to fact check, talk back to reporters, i think that micro human element that imagine if we had had that in the aftermath of 9/11. you think back -- or even at the 1989 earthquake in san francisco, i heard stories about when the bay bridge collapsed and people didn't know if their spouse was on the other side of the bay was in the bridge or not for, you know, like eight, nine hours. >> it has that human element, one of its great attractions. some of the humans posting there don't always have the information right. your side wrote about a guy named tom phillips, he started a blog, combines text, photo, video, it was called his twitter wrong. dedicated to showing some of the photos circulated on twitter and

other websites were storm photos from before, were completely bogus. >> or were just photo shopped. a lot of them weren't even authentic. we had a big debate on staff, we're still debating this on staff. david holmes wrote that piece really believes that this is actually kept twitter more honest this time around. it was able to be so instantly fact checked and corrected. paul carr, one of our more senior media commentators feels the opposite, a correction is only as good as the people to see it. a medium allows more misinformation to get out there in the first place, you can't say correcting it right away makes the sin go away. twitter is a way we can cover this and see the information, it is a big challenge though. >> part of the problem is when things aren't right, not that mainstream media don't make their fair share of mistakes,

they get picked up by twitter, instagram also looking for content for dramatic pictures from people's neighborhoods. how many of their readers see the corrections. that's the challenge. >> i don't have a lot of sympathy for mainstream media that does that. they could plug it in, see if they were photo shopped, came from somewhere else. the fact this guy was able to with a tumbler blog update so much in real time, come on. mainstream journalism still has a job to do. i think you can acknowledge people that don't do this for a living will put out bad information, retweet bad information, but come on. if you have a job as a journalist, check stuff. >> check stuff is always a good motto. he did work with some mainstream news organizations trying to knock down some false things on twitter. with so many posting, it is inevitable it is not going to be 100% accuracy. perhaps people come to expect that. sarah lacey, thanks for checking

in on the social media aspect of covering the storm. >> thank you. still to come, the website buzz feed, just talking about it, debunks a false claim. takes on his incoming boss in print. and signs in the presidential election. stay tuned for the media monitor next. that's why we're supplying natural gas to generate cleaner electricity... that has around 50% fewer co2 emissions than coal. and it's also why, with our partner in brazil, shell is producing ethanol - a biofuel made from renewable sugarcane. >>a minute, mom! let's broaden the world's energy mix. let's go.

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time for the media monitor, a weekly look at the hits and errors in the news business. here is what i like. website buzzfeed exposed a man spreading misinformation about hurricane sandy on twitter. this person's account comfortably smug was posting falsehoods like the new york stock exchange was under three feet of water. buzzfeed said he is the campaign manager for a republican house candidate in new york. when the website called him for comment, he hung up. he later resigned from christopher wright's congressional campaign and said i wish to offer sincere, humble, unconditional apology. so much for being comfortably smug. i like a new york times column on sexual abuse scandal at the bbc as we mentioned last week. the former boss mark thompson said he was vaguely aware a bbc

program killed an investigation into the late jimmy savel, legendary bbc host accused of abusing more than 200 children. thompson is also incoming chief executive of "the new york times" company. he writes not leading the charge to find out what happened at the network, he appears willfully ignorant and makes you wonder what kind of organization it was when thompson was running it and what kind of leader it was. also makes you wonder what kind of chief executive he'd be at the times. it is not easy for a columnist to point such a finger at the man slated to be your boss. the favorite sport of late night comics mocking mitt. center for media affairs said the monologues of jay leno, craig ferguson, jimmy fallon found the truth. 62 jokes about barack obama from convention to mid october, mitt romney was the butt of 148. >> romney in a good mood after the debate. on the way home, he let the dog ride inside the car.

>> had a guy come in appraise the white house and surrounding property. guess how much it is worth. $1.5 million. $1.5 million. mitt romney said hell, i got that on me. >> let me go out on a limb, say i don't think the hosts are politically biased, make exception for dave, he is leaning left. no wonder romney won't go on his show. as far as the others, obama is not that easy to ridicule. "saturday night live" had two impersonators, still doesn't have it. and the 1950s lingo, gosh, gee whiz, isn't hard to make people laugh. fourth most joked about in the study, man of outsized appetites, bill clinton. that's it for this edition of "reliable sources." i am howard kurtz. check us on itunes on monday, go to the nonfiction tv section of